Parallel Lines
by FireEdge
Summary: They were like parallel lines. Close, yet never quite touching.


Ever since I watched this amazing series, I've wanted to write for it, but I've never found the right opportunity to write anything. Then, all of a sudden, as I was doing research for my term paper, this little idea smacked me upside the head. So instead of trying to write my paper, I decided to quickly type this up… I'm probably going to regret this decision later, but what the heck… Anyway, please enjoy my first foray into the A: TLA section!

Disclaimer: I don't own Avatar: The Last Airbender.

**Parallel Lines**

"_Look, Mom! I drew the Water Tribe symbol!" Katara proclaimed proudly, tugging on her mother's tunic sleeve. _

_The older woman's gaze followed Katara's outstretched arm and settled on a drawing in the snow. It was indeed a rough approximate of the Water Tribe emblem, a crescent moon accompanied by waves of water. _

"_It looks wonderful, Katara, but the waves aren't quite right," Kya replied, kneeling down next to the drawing._

"_Really? I thought I got it right for sure…"_

"_Well, it's almost right, but you've just made the lines a little crooked. See, the ridges of the waves shouldn't touch each other. They're parallel lines, like this," said Kya, lightly smudging out the waves and retracing them with her finger._

"_Oh, I get it!" Katara chirped with a smile, already starting to redraw the symbol again. "But… what's… pair-a-lell mean, Mom?"_

"_Hmm, well there're a few meanings for it. It could mean two things that are very similar…"

* * *

_

"_I'm sorry. That's something we have in common."_

It was funny how those simple words could change everything. She had never thought that she would ever share something in common with the Fire Nation prince. After all, he was everything she was not—her polar opposite. She was a girl, he was a boy. She was a Waterbender, he was a Firebender. She was a 'peasant', as he used to call her, and he was royalty… And for the longest time, she had thought: She was good, he was evil.

Now, though, as she looked at his face—his eyes closed and his mouth set in a hard line—she thought that maybe they weren't that different, after all. They had both lost their mothers when they were young, and—as much as she hated to admit it—they both seemed to be equally hot-headed and stubborn, if their earlier argument had been any proof of that.

Katara lifted her hand and tentatively reached out to feel his scar. At the same time, she felt her heart beat a little faster. It wasn't that she was scared to touch the scar—she'd dealt with worse injuries before and this was such an old one—but, rather, it would be the first time she actually touched _him_.

Her eyes widened as her fingertips pressed against his cheek and she pulled away, almost instinctively, a moment later.

She saw his eyes open, a quizzical look reflected back at her, and she opened her mouth to apologize, to say that she hadn't pulled away in disgust, but that it was because she had felt something strange shoot right through her fingers when she'd touched him and—

"Katara!" Aang's voice called out as the two youths turned in surprise at the sound of collapsing rocks.

"Aang!" she exclaimed, turning her back on Zuko. Out of habit, she ran towards the young boy, and she lost her train of thought.

* * *

"I thought you had changed!" Katara snarled angrily before lashing out at him with a water whip. How could she have been tricked by his sob story?

"I _have_ changed!" the boy called back, deflecting her whip with a plume of fire.

The water evaporated as it collided with Zuko's flames. The young Waterbender tried again and again to hit him, grunting with effort as she used all her strength to flick the coils of water. However, each time he met her attacks with his own whips of fire, and neither of them could gain any ground. If anything, they could only succeed at pushing the other back.

Katara gritted her teeth in frustration as they circled each other warily, carefully keeping the same distance away, since neither wanted to give the other the opportunity to strike first. She knew she should keep calm, look for an opening, but she wanted to yell and rave. For a moment she had trusted him, she had thought that they could be friends. Yet here he was, turned against her without even a hint of remorse on his face. He only stared back at her calmly, his brows drawn down in concentration.

She was wrong, they _weren't_ the same. Not in the slightest.

* * *

"_But in this case, parallel lines means that they're two lines that are right beside each other, but that never touch. They could run on forever, and be so close that they're only separated by a snowflake… but they'll never touch."_

"_But, why can't they touch?" Katara asked with a frown, unable to comprehend._

"_Well… I don't know if there's an answer to that… But… maybe they're like magnetic poles that repel each other. No matter how hard you try and push them together, they just can't touch."_

"_Huh… that's kinda sad, though…" the girl replied, leaning back so that she plopped down on the snow._

"_Why's that, dear?" her mother asked, curious._

"_Well, if they're always so close, but can never touch, wouldn't they get really lonely?"

* * *

_

Anyway, this was something I threw together on a whim, so I have to apologize for the lack of plot and the fragmentyness of it all. I realize that this could be much longer, but I really just wanted to emphasize how similar, yet oh-so-different, Katara and Zuko are. The idea of parallel lines just struck me as a very appropriate representation of their relationship throughout the series (in a figurative sense, obviously)—they're almost so close yet they never quite touch.

Either way, hopefully it wasn't _too_ bad. Any feedback is much wanted and would be very much appreciated. Thanks a lot for reading, and I hope to be writing more for this section in the future!

-FireEdge-


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